Today I’m reporting on a 2013 study from Brazil that measured the brain creatine content of vegetarians and found it to be the same as for omnivores (1).

They compared the creatine content of the posterior cingulate cortex between vegetarians (6 women and 8 men) and omnivores. The posterior cingulate cortex was chosen because it is related to emotion formation and cognitive function (processing, learning and memory).

Although the vegetarians ate much less creatine than the omnivores (.03 vs. 1.34 g, respectively), they had similar brain creatine levels (6.0 vs. 5.9 IU, respectively). The authors say:

“It has been shown previously that oral [creatine] intake can have beneficial effects on cognitive function in vegetarians rather than in omnivorous individuals, suggesting that the former may show some deficit in brain [creatine] content. However, the present study refutes this hypothesis, reinforcing previous experimental data suggesting that brain [creatine] content relies primarily on local endogenous synthesis rather than on [creatine] dietary intake.”

This entry was posted on Friday, December 20th, 2013 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Creatine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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This is very interesting. Some experts have been saying that we need more creatinine, choline, taurine and L-carnitine to match our non-vegetarian peers. Others have been saying “no”, and that choline/L-carnitine/creatine supplements are harmful.

If you have a non-essential amino acid, then I think by definition it is non-essential – can be made by the liver from something else.

The study showing better memory in vegetarians after creatine supplementation had an interesting finding in that word recall (the only cognitive function which showed a difference from creatine supplementation) actually decreased in the placebo and omnivore-creatine groups. The vegetarians on creatine stayed about the same compared to baseline. The authors suggested that perhaps the words used after supplementation were harder to remember or that the participants lost interest in the study; they considered these explanations possible but unlikely based on the study design and other research. My guess is that, like in skeletal muscle, the body adapts to higher creatine intakes over time (which is why athletes are recommended not to take creatine all the time) and so perhaps a sudden intake of creatine increased the amounts in the brain for the vegetarians but not for the meat-eaters. In any case, I’d be surprised if this increase in word recall would affect daily life in any practical way unless your job is to be a contestant on Jeopardy, though I’m by no means an expert in cognitive testing so I could be wrong.

Thanks for the article. Creatine, besides B12, is the one supplement that I’ve been really interested in lately. Primarily I’ve been reading about the benefits it may have for body builders. But, I had no idea it might improve cognitive function in vegans. I wonder why it helps.